Cabinet Member Wants You To Think Obama Invented Hyrbid Cars
Why not? After all, Al Gore invented the internet right?
(CNSNews.com) — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has credited the Obama administration’s work on fuel standards for having “jump started” the development of Lexus hybrids, even though the company debuted its SUV hybrid in 2004.
While discussing vehicle fuel standards at the Aspen Ideas Festival on July 3rd, LaHood said, “I don’t think the car manufacturers would be manufacturing the cars they are manufacturing today as hybrids, if it weren’t for what the president did in signing the executive order and what Lisa (Jackson, EPA Administrator) and I have done over the last three and half years about developing C.A.F.E. (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards for automobiles and light trucks that will get 54.4 miles per gallon by 2025.”
“When you see now a Lexus hybrid, no one would have ever predicted that 2 years ago. Every car manufacturer is getting into hybrid, I think we jump started those opportunities,” LaHood said.
I’m not surprised that politicians would think that their policies, and not the laws of supply and demand in the marketplace, are what drives innovation and invention. Hybrid cars pre-date the Obama administration, but then so did government promotion of hybrid cars. The first tax credit for buying a hybrid car – up to a $3,400 credit per car – was a part of the The Energy Policy Act of 2005 passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Bush.
But hybrids, despite heavy pushing by the government, have never taken off. To this day hybrids make up less than 3% of all vehicles owned in the United States despite billions in subsidies and promotion from the government. This is because there really isn’t a market for hybrids. They’re terribly expensive, and those looking for fuel efficiency can get mileage that is as good or better from traditional gas-powered compact cars that cost far less than hybrids.
The only “demand” hybrids fulfill in the marketplace is a myopic sort of desire for environmental idealism.
Tags: Barack Obama, hybrids, ray lahood
